My Mother’s First Employment Contract

Vahe H. Apelian

Attached is a copy of my mother’ first employment contract as a teacher in the newly established Ehramjian school in Nor Amanos district of Dora, a suburb of Beirut. The contract is dated October 19, 1954.

What is remarkable about the contract is not only the expectation of high job performance from her but also the provision that her further employment is contingent upon her satisfactory job performance.  There is no inducement or appeal to her patriotism that she will be engaged in educating the young and upcoming Armenian students given that her pay will me a meager 75 Lebanese Liras per month and only for 9 months. 

This contract was presented, thirty-nine (39) years after the genocide as the Armenian community in Lebanon was structuring and organizing itself with their meager means. But but there is no false pretense in the contract. What mattered is that she performed her job satisfactorily and lived up to the expectations of the opportunity given to her. 

Attached is my translation of the contract. 

“October 1954

Gracious Mrs. Zvart Apelian

Note

Respected Madam

Having taken into consideration your application for employment, the Council extends an invitation to you as a teacher in the National Ehramjian (kindergarten and elementary) School in Nor Amanos, Dora.

You will be paid monthly 75 Lebanese Liras. The payment will be done for 9 (nine) months. That is to say, 675 – six hundred and seventy-five Lebanese Liras per year.

This opportunity is being offered to you with the hoբe that your teaching performance satisfies us. In time we will evaluate your performance for renewing your employment contract.  

Respectfully

On behalf of the Holy Trinity Board of Truteers

Secretary G.N. Afarian

Chairman Movses Ayntablian.”

In 1954, my mother was 30 years old young mother with two sons. She had already taught for several years in Keurkune and in Kessab Armenian Evangelical Schools. She continued teaching Armenian language, literature for the next fifty years or so, mostly in Armenian Evangelical community affiliated schools, without interruption and remarkably without a missing a single day.  In her own words it was a love affair. She wrote. “I and the teaching met each other in tender age, and we loved each other.”

 Thanks to the foresightedness of Zaven Khanjian, the Executive Director/ CEO of the AMAA, her portrait, painted by her niece Annie Hoglind, has now a place of honor in the Khoren and Shooshanig Avedisian School in the Malatia-Sebastia District of Yerevan, Armenia, along with copies of her two books.